At present, there are no known, reliable ways to test infrared radiation detecting devices in a full-scale, field test environment for performance characteristics such as minimum resolvable temperature, noise equivalent temperature difference, system resolution and many other performance parameters.
To test infrared detecting devices, the present technology is capable of providing two types of infrared test targets: one type is variable targets under controlled laboratory conditions; the other type is fixed full-scale targets under field conditions. As of date, no target generator exists which can combine both types to provide variable-pattern, variable-temperature, full-scale infrared targets under real-time, dynamic conditions. Many previous failed attempts at fabricating such a target generator concerned themselves with the problem of how to control quickly the temperature of an individual target element while maintaining uniformity among the target elements. Capability for timely temperature change requires that each target element have a low thermal mass while capability to maintain target element uniformity requires that each target element have a large thermal mass. The resulting design is a marriage of the two opposing requirements with the offspring requiring an extremely high power consumption to maintain a tight temperature control loop. The additional requirements of thermally isolating each of these target elements from its neighbor and producing a significant number of such elements with similar response characteristics soon drives the complexity and cost to an impractical level.